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Saturday, December 31, 2011

My shelf life: 2011

Alright. The year is quickly coming to a close, so it only makes sense to bare my 2011 reading list to the world. Let's all pretend you care for just a moment.

I'm not sure how to label myself as a reader. I plowed through 32 books and a total of 11,358 pages this year. That puts me at just over 31 pages per day. In other words, I'm a piker compared to other book bloggers, and a veritable reading machine compared to the general public. Given everything that's on my plate, I'd give myself a grade of "not too shabby" for 2011.

Here's the complete list, in the order I tackled them, along with their respective page counts (top 10 reads are in bold):

Blue Heaven, C.J. Box352

On Writing, Stephen King288

The Red Dancer, Richard Skinner272

A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking248

All the Pretty Horses, Cormack
McCarthy 301

The Lost City of Z, David
Gann 352

King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard320

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card324

Our Town, Thornton Wilder112

The Road, Cormack McCarthy 256

Trojan Oddyssey, Clive Cussler480

Smoke From This Alter, Louis L’Amour75

The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour,
Vol IV672

Grapes Of Wrath, John
Steinbeck 619

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor
Dostoevsky 480

The Associate, John Grisham434

Cry, The Beloved Country, Alan
Paton 256

The Appeal, John Grisham384

Animal Farm, George Orwell128

2666, Roberto Bolano 912

The Chosen, Chaim Potok 284

A Mercy, Toni Morrison176

Don Segundo Sombra, Ricardo Guiraldes212

Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev226

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon565

1984, George Orwell 326

The Elements of Style,
Strunk & White 176

Death in Venice & Other Tales, Thomas
Mann476

As I Lay
Dying,
William Faulkner 288

A Room With A View, E.M. Forster321

Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad451

Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner592

As you can see above, I'm not a complete book snob, though my favorites tended overwhelmingly to be classics or high literary fiction. All told, that's 17 so-called classics, 7 works of commercial fiction, 2 short story collections, 2 non-fiction reads, 2 books on writing, 1 poetry collection and 1 play. Continuing on the assumption that you care, here is the breakdown by page count:

It's kind of interesting to take a look back and see how you spent your reading life in the past year. What about you? What did you read this year? What were your favorites? What stunk? What should I pick up in 2012? Show us your cards...

6 comments:

I love this post. It motivated me to add up my totals: 42 books/9549 pages + 9 audiobooks/4603 would-be pages = 51 total books/14,152 total pages. 16 literature/Classics 22 young-adult books (failing to keep up with my kids there)1 commercial fiction1 poetry6 non-fiction5 biographyHard to pick my top ten, but my some of my favorites were:The Killer Angels by Michael ShaaraThe Whistling Season by Ivan DoigCity of Thieves by David BenioffA Separate Peace by John KnowlesRawhide Down by Del Quentin WilberThe Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins and the Harry Potter series on audio

I've added some of yours to my to-read list for next year. Great suggestions, and great blog! Thanks for your hard work!

My list isn't 100% accurate, I'm missing all the books I read in January somehow. Oh, and I'm an idiot. I forgot to add the book I finished yesterday: Increase in Learning by David A. Bednar. This brings my total to 52 books/14,359 pages. I guess it'd be in the non-fiction category (religious) and it's definitely on my list of favorites.

Michelle, you've put me to shame. Though, I guess if I tallied up all the Henry Huggins and Magic Treehouse books I read with my son I might come close- (no legitimate YA titles at our house just yet.)

Tucker, I actually wrote this post before the holidays, and before I finished Angle of Repose (which I still didn't manage to do before the new year.) I have a couple hundred pages to go, but at this point I can easily say that it is top ten material. I'm lovin' me some Stegner.

I'm a little disappointed to have fallen just short of 100 books for the year and I'm a little disappointed with the stack of books that are started but not yet finished. I still need to look at my list and determine the breakdown by type of literature. Definitely interesting to look at. We have only a couple of overlaps, but I'm adding a few of yours to my list for this year.